I love a good Dowdle puzzle every now and again. They are usually gorgeous and he has a great way of capturing people, and even though in most of his puzzles they’re tiny, you can usually still make out a lot of detail. I give him and Aimee Stewart a lot of credit for being able to create such tiny details in a puzzle image. They are both excellent artists in my opinion. Plus, it certainly makes for entertaining builds as well.

This is one I did several years ago (sensing a theme here?) during a visit with my brother. I always try to find a puzzle we can accomplish in a day or two rather than a larger, 1000 piece count, as we may not always have time to finish one that size. I would hate for him to work on it with me while he’s here and go home before it’s finished. That’s just not very satisfying and I know I wouldn’t like that too much. I’m sure he feels the same.

As you may or may not know about me, I am a huge fan of puzzles with buildings and architecture. I don’t know why exactly, but I have always been fascinated by buildings. Even as a child I remember checking books out of the library about skyscrapers and dreamed of going to the US mecca of skyscrapers — New York City. I didn’t end up getting there until well into adulthood when Randy took me there for the first time after we were in New York for a family wedding and then went and stayed in the heart of Times Square for a few days. What a fantastic trip!

Hometown Christmas is a very sweet and cute image. I loved putting together all the different houses and buildings in background. I think my favorite one is the one on the far left that’s got an almost glowing look of yellows and browns. It’s just gorgeous in my opinion. I didn’t find the build on this one to be overly tough, but part of that could be because it was only 500 pieces.

I don’t know, but whatever the reason, it was a fun build and made even more fun by completing it with my brother. Next time he’s here I will try to get him in a picture with whatever puzzle we’re doing at the time.